After receiving no answer from emails requesting a town hall health care meeting, I took up Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann’s call to make a house call on our congressional representative.
Despite less than a week’s notice, up to 50,000 Americans from across the country gathered at the steps of the Capitol Building yesterday to send a message to Congress – ‘kill the bill’. Pelosicare is not health care reform, it is a power grab.
At noon, 40 Republican members of Congress filed out of the Capitol building as the crowd shouted ‘Where’s Nancy?’ Madame speaker was not present on Capitol Hill this day, apparently she was too busy breaking arms over her health care scheme elsewhere.
FYI: Due to an overwhelming number of participants at this meet up, I could not get close to the speakers podium during the rally, but had an excellent view of the Capital Building. I chose that view to capture the speeches on video.
Mark Levin, Jon Voight, and John Ratzenberger (Cliff from Cheers) gave rousing speeches, firing up the crowd. It was a sight to behold! Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann sparkled in her speech to the crowds. Several of the speakers and numerous members of Congress walked along the front of the crowd shaking hands and thanking us for participating in the house call.
Cliff..err…John Ratzenberger looks at the philosophical descendants of Abbie Hoffman, Saul Alinsky and Wavy Gravy – Woodstock Democrats :
Michelle Bachmann – Quoting Abigail Adams and encouraging the crowd to “don’t hold back tell them how you really feel!”
Onward to the reason we gathered in DC – a house call on Congress. Lines quickly formed around the entrances of the buildings housing congressional offices. Chants of ‘Can U Hear Us Now’ and ‘Kill The Bill’ echoed outside the buildings.
Unfortunately for Pennsylvania, Rep Allyson Schwartz (D- Pa) is ready to vote ‘yes’ on whatever health care bill is put forward. She is also eager to levy additional ‘sugar’ taxes on to her constituents in order to pay for the ‘budget neutral’ health care scheme. My message to the congresswoman is simple – “Ma’am, if you vote ‘yes’ on any health care bill, your constituents will vote ‘no’ come November”. Although I was ignored by the staff at Allyson Schwartz office, another constituent was nearly assaulted by Rep. Gerry Connolly’s chief of staff. Should I consider myself lucky that I was not?
You can view more photos from the rally HERE.
Thanks for getting a good sweep of the crowd in that first video. I looked all over to see if a press photographer was able to get a shot of the crowd from the top of the Capitol steps so we could get a better idea of the crowd but could not find one. By all accounts, up to 20,000 people were there.
Thanks for covering this Skye!
That was a tough shot, Mike. I was squeezed against a low cement barrier wall and had to jump up to get any sense of crowd numbers.
After the rally, I bumped into a couple that flew out from California to attend this rally/meet up. I’ve never seen such a large protest organized in such a short period of time.
During the height of the anti-war, anti-America rallies, the peaceniks NEVER brought out these kinds of numbers of supporters. During this time, it was a fun game to discover how they were going to pad their sparse numbers. Some examples I’ve come across have been delaying the start time so the peaceniks could beg anyone in their cell phone contact list to come out and join them. Recruiting warm bodies from local homeless shelters, handing out a sandwich and a sign with directions on where to carry the sign. Narrowing the area where they marched in order to lengthen the column of protesters and not make them look sparse as they marched on by.
My favorite was the double back, if the the march was lengthy enough, those that arrived first would send some members back to repopulate their numbers.
CJ from a Soldiers Perspective clued me in on that one:
http://www.soldiersperspective.us/2007/03/20/reflections-on-the-gathering-of-eagles-pt-iii/
@Skye: I’m just very frustrated that no photojournalist in the “news” media seems to want to bother to give us anything like an accurate crowd photo from these events. Any of those guys could get permission to stand at the top of the Capitol steps and take a wide angle shot of the area to show the crowd but all the places I went looking for photos only showed closeups.
The American Revolution, the Reagan Revolution and now the Conservative Revolution. Remember we are all new Minutemen and Patriots in this third revolution.
“up to 50,000 Americans” attended? Er, yeah. And I could say that “up to 15 people had breakfast in my kitchen this morning” but that would not be accurate, either.
Newsflash: the teabaggers did not have a demostration permit. Now if someone actually showed up on Capitol Hill with “up to 35,000” people, methinks that that Capitol Police would be a bit perturbed, what with the lack of porta-potties, the lack of medical attendants for crush injuries, etc. But guess what? Not a peep from the C. Po. Because when you have LESS THAN 10,000 PEOPLE, that is pretty much a rounding error in a typical busy day on the Hill.
But it was good to see the Stalin and Hitler signs still in use, this time adding in a Dachau reference. Stay classy, teabaggers! Stay classy!
@B-Rob: Yeah, you’re right B-Rob. Why claim 50,000? We should just take a page from Obama’s saved and created jobs lie and claim 1,000,000 showed up.
By any measure it was a huge turnout. No denying that. Go suck an egg!
B-Rob, You should have made a Citizens Arrest then if it was a threat to you.
Were there any arrests made and for what crimes?
@B-Rob:
Perhaps you would like to take a stroll down memory, just for comparison purposes:
Real classy, eh? those are your guys.
Mark Levin’s website (under ‘Notes of Interest’) has some photos of the event:
http://www.marklevinshow.com/home.asp
And, some at Sean Hannity’s site (also, scroll down 1st page for more photos link):
http://www.hannity.com/Article.asp?id=1576646&spid=16420
Surely there’s bound to be some more pics out there. Wish I could’ve gone!
B-Rob, of course there images of stalin and Obama – they were being held by Democrat La Rouche supporters. The Dems need to police their members more closely to prevent these embarrassing nuggets of truth getting out.
Yes, there were arrests of Code Pink womyn protesting in front of Joe Lieberman’s office. It interesting to note that very, very few MSM articles identified Code Pink as the perpetrators of arrest-able stupidity.
I had to laugh at your 15 people analogy because even at the height of the anti war frenzy, those activists NEVER brought out the numbers we are seeing with the Teaparties and the Congressional House Call. The anti war groups would call a rally a success with 5 people, then lie about it and say 100,000 showed up.
B-Rob is just scared sh*tless because he knows his pudnuts in office now are about to be thrown out on their arses. Can’t wait for that to happen. So B-Rob, enjoy the criminals you like to call politicians while you have them. Their time is coming. But, of course B-Rob thinks that by believing they will be in office for a lifetime will make it so. Very typical of these liberals with their heads up their arses.
Madalyn